


Have Your Always Turned the Other Cheek?

by realpoutydadsurvives (collettephinz)



Series: Once More With Chris [6]
Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: "Character death", Abuse of Power, Angst, Betrayal, FBC sucks dong, Hurt/No Comfort, Kinda, M/M, Minor substance abuse, Pining, RE FBC, SO, alternating pov, barely knew her smh, endgame chreon valenfield stans please stay away, follows canon of resident evil revelations and the lost in nightmares dlc, if you know the plot then you know what's up, lost in nightmares dlc, lying, not like irl FBC, resident evil revelations - Freeform, rip terragrigia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-17 23:27:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19964977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/collettephinz/pseuds/realpoutydadsurvives
Summary: Chris Redfield is back with the BSAA after finding out he and Leon been betrayed by and lied to by people he considers his family and he--He is not handling this well at all.





	Have Your Always Turned the Other Cheek?

**Author's Note:**

> HAHAHAH RE5 NEXT OH GOD GUESS WHO'S NOT FUCKING READY CAUSE THEY'RE HELLA NERVOUS ABOUT WESKER FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK
> 
> also the time skips are necessary cause the opening and closing section aren't the same game???? and there's a POV switch midway, but it's very easy to tell cause when I switch POVs, I tend to start out with the name of the person of the new POV so don't be surprised ;u; sorry if there is confusion my b

Chris flung open the doors to the BSAA conference room so hard that the metal handles broke plaster as they swung and hit the walls. Paint and flecks of debris rained down onto the linoleum floor as Chris barreled into the room, still bloody and bruised from Terragrigia, still aching and sore from Spain, still _so fucking furious._ At the other end of the room stood David Trapp with Clive O’Brian, Rebecca Chambers standing beside them. Behind Chris, following him into the room, were Barry Burton, Jill Valentine, and John Andrews. Of the six people in the room, Chris only wanted to spare two of them from his wrath.

“Chris, you need medical,” Jill said for the millionth time since he’d landed back from Terragrigia with John, Barry, and O’Brian. And for the millionth time, Chris ignored her. Jill quickened her pace to catch up, put her hand on his shoulder, and Chris immediately whirled on his heel, slapping her hand away. 

“Don’t fucking touch me,” he snarled, furious beyond rational thought. “Get up front.”

Jill flinched away from him, but hesitantly did as told, moving to the end of the room where Clive and David and Rebecca were. Barry and John did the same, both of them watching Chris warily, though for different reasons. Barry was scared Chris would run himself into the ground and let a monster kill him— something that had nearly happened back at that ruined city. John was scared because he knew why Chris was snapping his teeth like a wounded dog. John knew why Chris was choosing to cover the hurt with anger. John knew _exactly_ how badly this was going to go.

Once everyone was at the other end of the long table and as far from Chris as they could possibly get, Chris pulled that mission summary for Spain that had brought Leon back into his life from his pocket and let it drop onto the desk. While most faces remained deliberately blank, David Trapp’s expression washed over with remorse. At least David knew. 

Chris chose his next words carefully. “Leon didn’t deserve the hell you condemned him to.”

The blank faces disintegrated— the culprits were filled with guilt while Rebecca seemed stunned. “Leon?” she repeated, her voice pitched with concern. “From Raccoon City? What happened to him?” Rebecca looked down at the papers and abortively reached for them. “I-is he hurt? Maybe I can help.”

Chris scowled at the guilty parties and resented how three out of four couldn’t even look him in the eye while David seemed unable to look away. David knew he’d fucked up and was _owning_ up from the start, so why couldn’t they? “I don’t think you can,” he told Rebecca. 

“Why not?” she asked

“Why don’t you ask them?”Rebecca turned to the others beside her. Her brow furrowed as she saw their expressions and her gaze went to John, the only other innocent. “What happened?”

“Don’t ask me, Doc,” John said with a grimace. “All I know is that the Leon Kennedy I met on that airstrip definitely hasn’t been barbecuing and perfecting that timeless dad bod.”

“Leon _S._ Kennedy,” Chris corrected sharply.

Shock painted Rebecca’s youthful features. “You— Chris went on an operation in Spain. He fought a new strain of B.O.W. that’s being detailed and studied by the United States government. Leon…” She looked to Chris with trepidation. "He shouldn’t have been involved in that in any capacity.”

“I agree,” Chris bit out. “Maybe one of you could explain it for her?”

“Don’t do this, Chris,” Jill beseeched. “It won’t fix anything.”

How fucking dare— “I don’t want to fix a damn thing, I want the people responsible for ruining Leon’s life to own up to what they fucking did!” Chris slammed his fists down into the table, the whole structure bucking, Rebecca flinching away. “You signed his death sentence!” Chris shouted. “The only reason I’m not at your throats for killing him is because Leon’s better than any of you at what he does! How could you do that to him?!”

“We’re sorry for taking you from your boyfriend, but it was a necessary evil,” O’Brian sighed, making Chris like the man less and less by the second. “According to your close friends, they reported you acting unlike yourself when Mr. Kennedy was around. Seeing as we’re always on the edge of an end-of-the-world scenario, having you so… distracted. Well. It wasn’t exactly good for the seven _billion_ people that rely on men and women like us.”

“Are you trying to tempt me into putting a bullet in your face?” Chris demanded through barred teeth. “Because I’m _this fucking close_ to putting a bullet in your face. And since I’m so important that you would ruin the life of an innocent, _good_ man, I’ve got a feeling I wouldn’t get in that much trouble for ending yours.”

“Jesus, kid,” Barry groaned as he purposefully and carefully moved to stand between Chris and O’Brian. “Look, it was a shitty situation and an even harder decision—”

“It wasn’t your decision to make!” Chris interrupted. “There’s no fucking universe where what you did was your decision to make! Leon’s entire future is in jeopardy because of you people! He’s a solo operative taking on fights that none of you would dare send any less than a team of five into! You willingly condemned him to die and the only reason he hasn’t died is because he’s never done anything in his life _except_ fight monsters!” Chris tore at his hair as angry, furious tears brimmed in his eyes, disgust making his stomach hurt. “ _He was supposed to be safe!_ He’s never been safe in his _life!_ How could you do this to him?!”

The room fell quiet as Chris’s scream overcame all else. Even beyond, in the control room of BSAA HQ where the rest of the men and women of the globe were doing their own work, silence reigned. Chris heaved a few breaths, trying to regain control, thinking of Leon who would flinch away from such violent shouting. Maybe Chris wanted these fuckers to fear his anger, but he didn’t want to be _feared._ He breathed forcefully through his nose and his fists on the table relaxed into splayed hands across the wood. He stared down at the papers he’d flung, exhibit A in black ink and blood, and read Leon’s name for what had to be the hundredth time. 

“Leon didn’t deserve this,” he said carefully once he knew he wasn’t about to lose it and etch himself in a list of names of people he would never want to be associated with. “You’re apologizing to me— you’re all apologizing for what you did to _me._ ” He looked up into the faces of the four people he’d once thought were his friends and fought down that anger again. “I don’t give a _shit_ about what you did to me. All I care about is what you’ve done to Leon.”

More silence. Jill took a shaky step forward. “Your obsession with Leon isn’t healthy.”

That anger— that fucking anger. “I don’t want to hear a damn word from you, Valentine,” Chris snarled. “And I tried to be nice about this, but you had a hand in this just like the others, so I’m done being the better person.” He looked her dead in the eye and slowly said, “I will never, _ever_ love you like you love me. Give up. Move on. Find something healthier. Find someone _better._ You think I’m obsessed with Leon? You’re the one who couldn’t even stand to see me with another person, so you supported letting Leon be _kidnapped_ and _blackmailed_ into service to fight monsters!”

David flinched and softly repeated, “Blackmailed?”

Jill’s hands were shaking. “It isn’t like that.”

“If it wasn’t, then you should have grown a fucking pair and told me to my face years ago!” Chris’s hands on the table became fists again. “Instead, you went behind my back and tried to take my future from me. You helped take away the man I love! I don’t care if you say it wasn’t like that— you were watching me like a coward and you ruined a man’s entire life just so I wouldn’t be able to date someone that wasn’t you!”

“I would never stoop that low! How can you think so little of me?”

_“Dammit, Jill, what else can I think?!”_

This time, Jill flinched, turning away completely, not letting Chris see face. Chris ground his teeth and looked away too. “After this, I want a new partner,” he told David and only David. As far as he was concerned, David Trapp seemed to be the only person who cared about _Leon_ and what had been done to him. And since David and O’Brian were Chris’s superiors, they were the ones in charge of the people he went into battle with. “Someone who isn’t in this room and isn’t responsible for what happened to Leon. And if you can’t find anyone, then I want to be alone.”

“That’s not a good idea, Mr. Redfield.”

“I don’t care,” Chris told David, his mouth a grim line. “You’re gonna give me this. You owe me as much.”

David nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“You can’t be serious.

“He’ll get himself killed!”

“Solo shit costs good men their lives.”

“If any of you truly believed that,” David said calmly to the varied protests within the room. “Then we wouldn’t have doomed Leon to the very same fate Chris is asking for.” David met Chris’s gaze solemnly. “I’ll do what I can to give as you request. Ms. Valentine will no longer be assigned to you in partnership unless an emergency dictates.”

As far as Chris was concerned, not even an emergency would make him work alongside Jill Valentine ever again. Nor Barry, nor O’Brian. The complete lack of remorse had Chris’s bones aching in his limbs and he itched for a cigarette. He hadn’t smoked since before Spain. 

_“You taste like cigarettes.”_

_“I didn’t say I hate it.”_

Chris was suddenly trembling. “I need to leave.”

“Of course,” Rebecca said, speaking up suddenly. “I mean, you just came back from Terragrigia after an overnight operation with a new BOW— you need bedrest and fluids and you need to get checked over thoroughly by medical ASAP. I’ll take you.”Chris was suddenly being whisked out of the room by Dr. Chambers before he could even protest— he was grateful when she thought to snatch up the mission summons from the table. Chris didn’t know why he was so attached to that stupid piece of paper. He had found it in his locker after just coming back and hadn’t been able to look away from Leon’s name. He was just glad Rebecca had grabbed it for him as she hurried him to his office. 

“I didn’t know Leon was doing B.O.W. work,” Rebecca told him, young and anguished. “Oh god, the things he’s had to have seen.”

She didn’t even know the half of it. If Chris closed his eyes for too long, he would feel Krauser’s blood on his skin. 

“Someone dropped something off at your office,” Rebecca said as she shut the door behind herself, sheltering herself and Chris in Chris’s warm, private office. Everything was dark wood and homey, photographs covering the walls, Claire, his parents, his Air Force buddies, Forest and Barry and the Kendo’s and more. Chris couldn’t look at the smiling faces for too long, but he knew he’d never be able to get rid of any of the photos, regardless of the burdening memories they carried. Rebecca was holding a letter to him, a simple white envelope— 

With a red lipstick kiss on the corner. 

“Once you read this, I’m taking you home,” she said firmly, putting her foot down, literally and figuratively while Chris held the envelope in numb fingers, trying to think of anyone else this could be from other than who he knew it was. “Doctor’s orders.”

Chris nodded slowly, like he was underwater. “Can you wait outside while I read this?”Rebecca hesitated, but did as asked. She touched his shoulder in a friendly gesture before leaving the room entirely, leaving Chris alone with the smiling faces, most of the people in the pictures long dead, and many of the others now impossible for Chris to stomach the smile of. He felt the eyes like spotlights as he slipped his fingers beneath the sealed edges and pulled the envelope open. Inside was a polaroid photograph.

It was—

Chris staggered back and crumbled into the guest chair, his body finally giving out on him after three days of constant stress and combat and fear. The image in his hand that witnessed his collapse along with the countless photos on the walls was of him and Leon, Chris laid beneath the younger man across that hotel bed back in Spain, Leon sitting in his lap, naked as Chris, riding Chris’s cock and staring down at Chris like Chris was the only person who existed. The photo was taken from the window outside the room, a horrifying breach of privacy that Chris knew was typical of the sender. He flipped the photo, unable to look upon Leon’s awesome and overwhelming _everything_ for too long, and saw writing across the back.

_You’re a fool, Chris Redfield._

Cursive, purposefully feminine. Signed with a heart and the initials A.W.. 

Chris hung his head in his hands and prayed Rebecca wasn’t waiting outside his door so she wouldn’t hear him finally succumb to the agony in his chest and finally admit he was nothing but weak and finally let himself cry, mourning the man he’d lost.

. . .

**One Year Later**

“Slow down, Chris.”

This was a fucking emergency, Jessica.

Chris wanted to respect her and her needs, wanted to be a good partner and keep a pace she could handle, but they were moving at a snail’s pace already, the cold was biting through his thermals, and there was a Veltro base to infiltrate that could have god knew how many red flags and threats to the wellbeing of the world. Slowing down wouldn’t help anyone but Jessica Sherawat keep her immaculate hair and makeup from being smudged by a little extra sweat of exertion, because god forbid she look anything but runway status even when people’s lives were at risk.

That wasn’t fair. Jessica was a good agent from the little work they’d done together. She was reliable and resilient and a good shot. Chris should be grateful to have her at his side.

He wasn’t grateful— he knew exactly why.

“We’re almost there, Jessica,” he said placatingly. The tundra surrounding them was barely visible through the harsh weather of a snow storm. His boots sunk three inches down as he stopped in his tracks to check the small device displaying their latitude and longitude. They were looking for the camp of their enemies and the lack of visibility made Chris nervous.

“I certainly hope so,” Jessica said, her voice soft. “My feet are killing me.”

“Ours source indicates the camp is on the far side of this peak,” Chris said. He glared up at the mountain and wished time had taken more of a tole on it, brought it down to something a little less Everest and more skiing-in-Michigan.

“Not sure if it’s the weather, but I still can’t make contact with HQ.” Jessica sighed heavily. “Who’d of thought we’d be stuck out here for so long?”

Chris didn’t deign her complaints with a response. Again, Jessica was a skilled agent and an incredible shot, but half the words that came out of her mouth was a gripe about the situation, and the other half was some blatant flirtation that Chris would ignore as much as he ignored the complaining. They hadn’t even been here that long, only a few hours by Chris’s count. Granted, HQ could have dropped them off somewhere closer considering the storm would’ve provided excellent cloud coverage for any stealth assault, but the pilot had been unsure of his abilities and Chris hadn’t wanted to push. The walk wasn’t bad. Chris had done worse. They weren’t even being hunted by anyone or anything. This mountain range sure beat trekking through Spain with the Plaga breathing down Chris’s spine and breathing inside Leon.

Ah, shit, he did it again. Then again, it was hard not to think of Leon. He had the photo Ada Wong had snapped of them in the throes of love and ecstasy tucked away in his back pocket. To remind himself of what he was still fighting for, Chris always had that photo on him. Always.

A high pitched noise came from above, coming closer and closer, and then passing them completely— a commercial airline plane careening through the sky overhead, its four engines burning. Jessica gasped behind him, then cried out, “The plane!” as the craft nosedived out of sight. Chris didn’t see the impact, but he felt it and heard it, the ground shaking and the audible destruction of metal tearing itself apart, and then the flare of light as bright as the sun a sign of the explosion. “My god,” Jessica said, her voice strained. “It crashed!” The light died and they were left in the darkness of the snowstorm again.

“There shouldn’t be any shipping routes in this area,” Jessica told him. 

“Then the intel we got on Veltro was on the money,” Chris replied. He knew just as well as she did that that had been no civilian aircraft. He felt little pity for the people inside. If anything, the villains they were pursuing had hopefully already met a violent end. “Come on.” He quickly led Jessica over the peak, the storm clearing the higher up they got. The clarity gave Chris a perfect view of the down aircraft once he came over the ledge, the entire thing broken into three separate parts, still burning. 

“Jesus,” Jessica murmured behind him. “No one could have lived through that.”

If they were lucky, no one had. Chris dropped down the small cliff face between them and the craft and approached cautiously, sights up. On the off chance that someone had survived, he didn’t want to be caught with his pants down. Jessica dropped down noisily behind him and Chris distantly reminded himself to talk to David Trapp about possible stealth classes for himself and the men and women of the BSAA. They really were a pretty loud group of soldiers, and one day that could cost someone their life. 

The intrusive thought bled away carefully. Chris had long ago learned that he needed to just take the small, irrelevant thoughts and allow them a small spot of occupation in his mind. It had first started happening in Terragrigia a year ago, the tiny ideas of improvement that he wasn’t entirely sure were his own. Things for himself and his partners and the BSAA, things to fix and grow upon and make better. His mind was always working for the BSAA in some way now and he wasn’t positive he wanted to stop it, even if it meant the intrusive thoughts came during inopportune moments, such as when he should be scouting a downed aircraft near the base of a known terrorist cell that was supposed to be disintegrated and yet clearly wasn’t. 

It was funny— years ago, he’d given a certain man flack for always getting stuck in his head when he shouldn’t. Now Chris was making the same damning mistake, making him nothing more than a hypocrite. 

“Investigate the site,” Chris ordered to Jessica. “Let me know if you find anything.” 

Jessica went one direction, Chris went the other. The flames were still high on the burning remains, making Chris wonder what was inside this plane that allowed the fire to keep burning even in the windy, cold conditions. He searched with his gun up, finding a huge cage big enough to fit five men. The door to it was bent open and broken, torn apart in a way that a human being couldn’t achieve. Definitely not a good sign. “What the hell were they carrying, Leon?” Chris asked himself. Another bad habit, too. Asking questions to a man who was nowhere near him just because the other man had proven himself to be far more astute than Chris could ever be. He wasn’t letting go of this tick either— he was just waiting for the day that he accidentally asked something of Leon within earshot of someone else.

He found more interesting items, a metal cabinet with a biohazard symbol plastered onto it that Chris foolishly opened. Inside was a glob of flesh that smelled oppressively of rotten meat and salt water, like the flesh of a skinned whale. He brought out his Genesis Bio-Scanner, some fancy piece of equipment from Quint in tech, and scanned the disgusting globule of body tissue. The scan affirmed his suspicions. “I found some faint traces of virus here!” Chris called out to Jessica.

From behind him: “Chris, do you really think we’re dealing with Veltro again?”

Chris grimaced. “Hard to say,” he replied after a moment. “I find it difficult to believe they survived Terragrigia, though.”

The fall of that city was still crystal clear in Chris’s memory. John had taken him from Spain to the Mediterranean Aquapolis that was in its last struggles for life. O’Brian and Jill and Barry were there and Chris— Chris had been so lost in the pain in his chest that he’d nearly gotten himself killed. BSAA boots weren’t meant to be on the ground, but Chris had brute forced his way into the fight regardless, unable to exist in the same space as those people. Chris had been neck deep in Hunters and without a bullet left in his gun and he’d still kept going because the idea of looking Barry and Jill and O’Brian in the eye and having the ghost of Leon’s lips on his skin, the true face of the crisis and the betrayal, the hurt of being stabbed so cleanly in the back and how Leon had suffered for it— His pain had made him stupid and he’d been running on empty and staring up into the eyes of a Hunter that had meant to tear him limb from limb and Chris without an ounce of fear because, for a split second, a death like that had seemed like a fitting end.

Barry had come through, in the end. He’d been only a few steps behind Chris the whole time, keeping an eye on Chris because he’d known exactly how self destructive a man could get. And when Barry had thrown himself between Chris and the Hunter and blown that monster’s face away, Chris had screamed at the older man and accused him of so many awful things that Barry didn’t even bother to deny. As that city had died around them, Barry had taken the hateful words and soaked them into his skin and let Chris be angry because Chris had every fucking right to be _angry._ And when that city had been leveled by the satellite, Chris had let his vein-deep grudge against Barry Burton die with it, because he was too tired to hate Barry any longer. He could get angry, he could shout and scream, but he just couldn’t hate.

If Chris’s hatred for how the man he’d loved had been betrayed hadn’t survived the destruction of Terragrigia, there was no way Veltro had as well.

Jessica didn’t respond because she knew of the hell that Terragrigia had turned into better than Chis did. She’d been there for the full two weeks under the FBC, trying in vain to keep things from getting steadily worse. Chris had arrived at the tail end. Jessica had suffered the whole thing.

Chris broke away to search further, heading for the cockpit, finding another container of the viral flesh and scanning that as well, scrunching his nose at the stench. He then moved on, going to the door that sectioned off the body of the plan from the control room itself. Chris opened the door and barely jumped as a corpse fell out at his feet, though Jessica let out a startled noise. Chris grimaced down at the body and noticed it wasn’t burned and there weren’t any external injuries that he could make out, though there was a bit of blood coming from the hairline that was covered by a beanie. Had the man simply hit some nasty turbulence, lost the engines, and knocked his head? Or had something gone wrong in the engines from sabotage and the man had been killed from head trauma during the crash? Chris went down on his knees to search the body and found a cleanly detailed flight plan.

He held it up for Jessica to see. “The manifest should give us a lead to work with.” He held it out for the woman to take and she studied it with sharp eyes.

“Let’s see,” she murmured mostly to herself. “Looks they were headed to Valkoinen Mökki airport, a Finnish name meaning white cabin.” She looked up at Chris. “That’s nearby, isn’t it? That structure on the maps. Wasn’t there a way to get there on foot?”

“The mine,” Chris said, looking around the crash site. “There’s an entrance nearby us right here.” Could whatever had escaped this crash gone through the mine was well? The virus was kept in droves on the plane, and if something infected had survived the crash and wandered away, then who knew what they would find in those mine shafts. Chris’s eyes landed on a cave opening a ways off, knowing it was the mine entrance they were looking for. Dread inched down his spine, but he shrugged it off. The mines of this Scandinavian mountain range couldn’t be worse than the caves of that island in Spain. Maybe the dread was because Chris was beginning to develop some sort of late-onset claustrophobia. That had to be it. Couldn’t be anything else.

“Follow me,” he told Jessica, heading into the tunnels. The reprieve from the weather was nice, but the tight quarters were definitely making him nervous. A lift gate stood between them and the bowels of the mind. Chris waited for Jessica to join him and they both lifted the gate over their heads with effort, the metal slamming down behind them once they ducked beneath it. “No going back now,” he said.

“This cave is too cold,” Jessica complained. Maybe she shouldn’t have gone with a leggings-and-shorts combo then.

“You should’ve worn your thermal underwear,” Chris replied, deciding the obvious needed to be mentioned. A howl echoed through the mines as Chris vaulted down more ledges, heading deeper and deeper. Chris tightened his grip on his gun, the Beretta 92FS an unfamiliar weight, Matilda instead tucked into the holster at his side. He didn’t want to risk damaging the gun in the cold and hoped he wouldn’t have to use her in these conditions. But then again, the Beretta didn’t give him the same comfort Matilda did. Chris pulled the Benelli M3 Super 90 from over his shoulder as a compromise.

“Hey,” Jessica says, her voice wavering with what could be fear. “Did you hear that?”

Chris kept the shotgun up as they came to an opening in the caves, natural light spilling out from holes in the ceiling. His heavy footsteps echoed through the rock and from the darkness beyond, out of the stretching tunnels, came wolves. Or at least, they had been wolves. Their bodies were torn apart by their own ribcages breaking through their torsos, Chris’s own skin crawling as he remembered scars on the body of another man, puncture wounds of this very horrific injury. He squeezed the trigger and let the blast of the shotgun drown out the memory, the wolves thrown back by the spray— and then clambering immediately back to their feet.

“Be careful!” He called out to Jessica behind him. “I think they’re infected!”

Jessica’s own Beretta fired reliably behind Chris, and the woman exclaimed, “This is why I like chihuahuas!” 

Chris agreed for once— these bulking wolves could easily leap over one of his shots and take him down with a well aimed snap at his throat. He kept up the shotgun fire, not letting the infected get too close, the whimpers and sharp cries of the dying animals doing something to him that killing normal infected didn’t. “Always wanted a dog with you,” he mumbled to an absent man as he shot the last of the infected, the poor creature writhing on the ground as the infection ate away at its body and it turned into a rancid carcass, nothing more. Whatever had escaped the crash site had definitely come through here and left its mark. 

“Was the plane transporting these things?” Jessica asked as she reloaded.

“Looks that way, doesn’t it?” Chris asked hypothetically. To tell the truth, he didn’t think the wolves were capable of tearing through that cage he’d found. Something much bigger and meaner than these wolves were out here— the wildlife was just victims.

“Veltro is back from the dead…”

She sounded terrified. Chris understood why. “Yeah,” Chris agreed. “And we have to stop them before anyone gets hurt.” He and Jessica traded a look, Terragrigia still so fucking prevalent in their minds. Chris dug his boots in and headed further, shotgun up and taking down more wolves that they came across. They were nothing more than a bother, and that was what made killing them worse. There was no reason for these animals to suffer and die— they weren’t even useful weapons. It was just negligent abuse and it angered Chris to no end. 

They came to a series of bridges, intact and broken alike. Chris leaped across them first, mindful of Jessica behind him, waiting to hear her land before moving to the next. The cold was getting worse the deeper they went, and Chris shivered reflexively. “I just can’t believe Veltro is back,” Chris said, his voice bouncing off the walls caging them in. “How did they make it out? The FBC said they disbanded Veltro, they couldn’t still be around. Even if members had somehow survived, where would they get the funding to keep this up?” He glanced over his shoulder to the woman. “You’re ex-FBC— are they usually careless enough to leave loose ends?”

Jessica narrowed her eyes. “It wasn’t an accusation or judgement of you,” Chris said quickly. “But you left the FBC for a reason.”

"I was following my friend,” Jessica said. “Parker. He wanted to be part of the fight, not above it. And I went with him because I trust him.”

Chris’s thoughts stalled. “You left your cushy government career for a low paying death trap just for your friend?”“That’s what loyalty is, Chris,” Jessica said, driving a knife into Chris’s chest without meaning to. He forced his gaze ahead and told himself for the millionth time that he’d made the right decision. A world at war needed fighters, not lovers.

As they pushed forward, taking down the poor infected along the way, Chris derailed that train of thought and ran over possible drills that could be developed to aid BSAA members in culminating stealth abilities.

“So,” Jessica said suddenly, her voice ringing out. “Jill, was it?”

“Was what?” Chris asked, the name sending icy hot anger through his chest, yet another thing to swallow down. “Stay focused.”

“She was your partner before, right?”

Maybe a year ago, before Spain, before the truth.

“Yeah, my _partner,_ ” Chris emphasized. “From before— long before. What about it?”

“I was, you know— just asking!”

Chris fought the urge to roll his eyes. The woman was an amazing soldier, but she was also as obvious as the sun. She’d been throwing herself at Chris constantly since they’d been assigned together only a few months ago. Chris had been doing stuff with John after he’d made the inarguable statement that he wouldn’t be partners with Jill Valentine, or any of those three people for that matter. Their attempts at placating him after Terragrigia had fallen flat, their pitiful excuses only serving to infuriate Chris more and more. They obviously didn’t care about Leon and it showed and Chris _hated_ it. They didn’t understand that Chris wasn’t furious for being lied to— they weren’t even sorry for the hell they’d thrown Leon S. Kennedy into. Chris wouldn’t work with those people unless he absolutely had to. He’d been grateful to be given a new partner because it meant Jill had stopped trying to argue being forced at his side again, saying he was being reckless. Now that Jessica was here, Jill no longer had a foothold to worm her way back into his life.

The bitterness was ugly in his chest and he swallowed that down too.

The mine opened up again, this time into a huge area with the sky overhead, exposing them to the elements. A natural walkway of rock expanded the edge of this dome-like area, the place almost reminding Chris of an arena. Jessica went ahead as Chris peered over the ledge to the ground below, seeing it was a bad drop. The walkway broke off at one point and Jessica jumped across the gap gracefully, turning back to him. “Let’s move it, Redfield!” she called out, voice lilting like she was trying to tease. 

Chris frowned, but followed anyways, making the leap— and flailing as the ground he landed on proved to be much more uncertain for his landing. “Oh shit!” he shouted as it broke beneath his feet and he was sent rolling to the ground far below, his exposed arms scraped up by the jagged rocks, body bruised from the tumble. He groaned in pain as his leg refused to let him get to his feet immediately while another howl sounded from far away. “Oh fuck,” he said to himself, bringing up the Beretta and aiming it into the darkness, knowing what was coming for him and unable to maintain mobility. “Just my luck, right, Leon?” he asked himself as the clatter of nails on stone scraped his ears.

“Chris!” Jessica called out from above. “Are you okay?!”

“It’s just my leg!” Chris called back, trying to keep from panicking as the sounds came closer. “I’m not going anywhere for a while!” The limb protested his weight. He knew that if he could just get to his feet, he’d be able to keep moving, but the standing part was what was proving to be impossible. Chris crawled back across the ground and tried to find something he could use to lift himself. Another howl, much closer this time.

“Hold on, I’ll be right there!”Chris fucking hoped she would, especially as the wolves came into view, barreling across the ground straight for him. Chris opened fire, trying to keep them back with a steady rain of bullets, counting each short that left his gun. Overhead, he saw Jessica scrambling down the side of the wall, every step careful. If she fell and injured herself too, they’d both be done for. Worry laced through Chris, and it wasn’t for himself. He fought to keep his focus on the infected and not his partner, knowing that he had to trust the people he worked with, but how could he trust BSAA after what they’d done to him, how could he trust when none of them were—

The snap of jaws next to his ear had Chris dropping onto his back to avoid the teeth, firing up at the infected wolf on gut instinct more than skill, losing count of the bullets he fired for a moment. The infected was thrown back and Chris shoved himself up again, shaking a little as he kept up the barrage of fire. Shots came from above, Jessica stalling in her descent to lay down some cover fire that Chris _greatly_ appreciated. “Me and my sweet ass are on the way!” Jessica declared as Chris shot his last round and switched back for the shotgun. The horde was thinning and there was another shout from above. “Grenade!”

Chris rolled over onto his stomach and covered his head with his arms, flinching as the explosion shook the ground. The skittering of wolves was gone and replaced by human footsteps. Chris looked up as Jessica ran towards him, her expression twisted with concern. “Your leg?”

“Help me up.” 

Jessica took Chris and lifted him to his feet. Chris groaned as pain flashed white behind his eyelids. He reached into one of the pouches on his belt and took out one of three low-dose RescueDose injections he always kept on him. Chris uncapped the needle with his teeth and stabbed it into his thigh, injecting the painkiller and adrenaline and then forcing his weight onto the injured leg. The pain was already ebbing away into a worrisome nothing and he knew he’d have to be careful about taking injuries as the morphine was a blood thinner.

“Geez,” Jessica said, watching him with a pinched brow. “You know, I heard about your habit of ignoring injures on an op, but I never thought it was _this_ bad.”

Chris scowled at no one and stomped the injured leg on the ground a few times, making sure it could handle whatever he needed it to do. “Take it up with HQ later if it bothers you,” he snapped defensively. “No one forced you to be my partner.” 

It wasn’t an addiction like Jill seemed to think it was— it was a necessity. Chris hated the painkiller, hated how it made his limbs feel almost too-responsive, and he hated how it made it harder for him to actually judge a life threatening injury against one that wasn’t. But Chris needed to see these operations through and he wouldn’t let an injury get in the way of that. He needed to make the world a little safer. “Come on,” he beckoned once he saw Jessica wasn’t going to push the subject of the pain killer. “We need to keep moving.”

“Yes sir,” Jessica said calmly. “I just hope you won’t expect _me_ to shoot up and keep going if I break a leg.”

“My standards are not your own,” Chris replied stiffly. “You do what you know is within your capabilities, just as I do.”

“So you just inject that shit and move on? What if you bleed out internally?”

“My standards are my own.”

He led on, ignoring the way she was looking at him. Jessica gave a long suffering sigh. “Sorry to bring this up again, but…”

When she trailed off, Chris clenched his jaw. “Bring what up?”

“Do you… trust me as much as you trust Jill?”

He didn’t trust Jill one god damn bit.

“There’s no need to compare,” he lied. “I trust you both. Besides— trust is built through action, not words.”

“So did Jill do something then?”

The rift between Chris and the other founding members of the BSAA was common knowledge, though few people knew the why. Chris grit his teeth. “It doesn’t matter— I trust her as a soldier and that’s all we need to take down these viruses.”“That’s so like you, Chris,” Jessica said. “It’s always about the job, isn’t it?”

Chris didn’t know what to say to that because Jessica was absolutely right. It was always the job for Chris because it was all he had. Even Claire was gone, off in India with TerraSave saving lives more effectively than Chris could ever dream of, but before that, she’d been in harm’s way again, in Harvardville airport, and she’d met someone again. And Claire—

_“I saw Leon at the airport— he doesn’t look so good, Chris.”_

Leon—

Maybe Chris should talk to David Trapp about building a full scrimmage course with cameras and low-cost sensors so the BSAA operatives could practice stealth in a fully immersive environment.

“Gimme a hand,” Chris called out as he came to another iron gate, needing his partner’s help to lift it over their heads so they could duck underneath into the other side. As it fell behind them with a clunk, Chris began to imagine that scrimmage course in greater detail so he could have something real to pitch to David once they were back. He strode ahead and stood over a cliffside, looking down into the swirling white to see trees and a small collection of buildings with a long stretch of tarmac and a tower.

“Is that the airstrip?” Jessica asked.

Had she never seen an airstrip in her life before?

“That’s their hideout,” Chris confirmed, his tone dry. “See what you can see.”Jessica stepped forward with a nod, scanning the hideout with her binoculars up. She didn’t say she saw anything of interest, but Chris didn’t want to distract her by asking for information she might not have just because he was impatient. As she looked, Chris’s communications unit in his ear chimed. He found himself vaguely impressed he had a signal through this storm considering they hadn’t managed one before when they were down in the crags. He pressed the palm of his hand to the device, allowing the voice to filter through.

_“This is Forkball. Do you read?”_

Hearing Clive O’Brian’s in his ear like this was probably one of his least favorite things about being on an op. They’d met Clive O’Brian a few months after the Rockfort Island incident and he’d been acting as their leader ever since, David grateful to step down. Chris had done some digging after coming back from Spain, had found out that O’Brian had been the one spearheading for Chris to be lied to and Leon’s situation to be covered up. He’d been the one insisting that they needed Chris focused and not involved with the other man for the sake of the world. Barry and Jill and David had all reluctantly agreed. In the end, the person Chris felt like he was angriest with the most was Clive fucking O’Brian, a man had barely known him and yet had affected Chris’s life so fucking much in the worst way Chris could imagine.

“Chris here,” he replied, voice firm and all business. “I read you, Sir.”

_“Are you alright? Where are you?”_

“The interference here killed our signal,” Chris replied, keeping his tone as controlled as he could. He’d always had a rough time with submitting to leadership and it was even more difficult considering the resentment he harbored for this man. He knew O’Brian was asking for the mission’s sake more than anything, but it took all Chris had to just not ignore the transmission entirely. “We’re at Valkoinen Mökki airport.”

 _“Dammit,”_ O’Brian spat. _“It’s all a setup!”_

Chris blinked twice, taking in that singular word slowly. Suddenly all thoughts and petty emotions died away. A setup— “What do you mean?” he asked, lowering his voice until he was barely audible, not sure if he could trust anyone. 

_“I sent Jill and Parker to the Mediterranean on faulty intel, and now I’ve lost contact with them.”_ There was a pause as Chris digested this slowly. _“I haven’t heard from them since.”_

“How?” Chris demanded, wondering just how fucking faulty intel had to be to send people into an ocean and get them trapped. “What’s going on?”

“Chris,” Jessica said, drawing his attention as she slowly passed him the binoculars. “You better look at this.”

Chris took the binoculars after letting his hand fall away from the comms. He peered through them into the white, searching for whatever it was that could have made Jessica sound so urgent. When he saw the yellow flag of Veltro, he suddenly understood why. “Leon— it’s impossible,” he murmured under his breath.

“O’Brian, you’re not gonna like this,” Jessica said into her own communicator. “We found the Veltro crest.”

 _“Then stories of their resurrection are true,”_ O’Brian said solemnly. _“If that’s the case, then…”_

Jessica shook her head. “Then the setup that got Jill and Parker, it was all…”

 _“Yeah,”_ O’Brian grumbled. _“I’d almost guarantee it.”_

Chris shut his eyes for a moment and took a steadying breath, trying to get himself back on track with everything. A terrorist cell brought back from the dead, two missing BSAA agents, and the possible threat of another bioweapons outbreak. They had no way of knowing if any intel they received would be trustworthy since they’d already lost two people to false intel in the first place. Then there was the worry of other bioterror attacks being made while the BSAA was stretched thin, four of its best members all preoccupied, two of them just missing entirely. With Valentine and Luciani both gone, the BSAA was shot at the knees. Right now, what they needed more than anything else was to be at full capacity again.

“O’Brian,” Chris said. “We’ll go after Jill and Parker. Hope that’s not a problem.”

_“Not at all. Make your way to the mediterranean and we’ll keep you posted.”_

The transmission ended and Chris lowered the binoculars, unable to look at that gaudy yellow flag any longer. “Any idea what’s going on?” Jessica asked him.

He didn’t have a fucking clue. “We’ll sort it out later,” he said, ignoring the tight anxiety in his chest at the idea of having to exist in the same area as Jill Valentine once he found her. He almost considered taking another shot of the morphine just to quell the shakes that were beginning to reemerge. God, he was a fucking disaster when angry. “We have to move.” As he turned from the airport and began to trudge back down the mountain into those hellish minds, he smiled sardonically to himself and whispered, “I’d give anything for a cigarette, Leon.” 

Trying to quit in the middle of another BOW shitfest? Worst idea ever.

. . .

_“This is Chris, are you two alright?”_

“Chris!” Jill cried out with more than a little relief, the very name bursting from her lungs in the same way she’d just burst from the depths of the chilling Mediterranean waters moments ago. “Yes, we’re fine. But the ship is sinking fast!”

Chris had come for her— _Chris had come for her._ Did that mean what she prayed it meant? That the silent treatment as over, the torture of being like a stranger to a man she felt such ingrained loyalty for finally coming to an end? Would they become equals again, partners? Would he care about her again as a person and not just a fellow soldier?

Would he stand by his side and let her see him smile for the first time in a year?

_“We’re approaching the Queen Zenobia now. Rendezvous at the ship’s hall.”_

All business as always, as was the way it had to be with Chris Redfield.

“Roger,” she affirmed. “We’ll be waiting.”

 _“Okay, see you soon.”_ She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard his voice. Months, days, weeks. It was hard to count when the world was perpetually ending. _“Chris out.”_

The guilt was there, always the fucking guilt, the guilt that had lingered since Chris had come back from Spain a year ago and sworn his near-hatred of the people who had once been his family all for some rookie-cop-turned-government-agent he barely knew. She kept telling herself that the guilt was undeserved, that she’d made the right choice, that Chris was better off, but did she really believe that?

“We should go to him,” Parker said from behind, his gruff Italian accent just as comforting as ever, reminding Jill distantly of her father who was still safely in prison, Dick Valentine locked away and not even officially connected to her by paper trail. Untouchable and living as well as he could, repaying for his crimes but not suffering at the hands of villains.

Courtesy of a certain Officer Leon Kennedy.

She felt such guilt— she wanted to believe she didn’t deserve it, but Jill Valentine wasn’t stupid and she wasn’t cruel. She knew exactly what she deserved and didn’t. And she also knew what Leon Kennedy hadn’t deserved either.

It had taken months for her to finally come to terms with this realization. Chris had been so angry with them because of what they’d done to Leon, and not him. It had taken her months to understand that, months to know what it really meant. And it had taken her even longer to swallow the reality that had come to life.

Chris Redfield would never love her. Chris Redfield _loved_ Leon Kennedy.

And Jill Valentine had played a part in dooming Leon Kennedy to a fate worse than her own— fighting the same monsters, the same evil, the same fear, but fighting it alone, without Chris.

How could she have done that to Leon Kennedy? To Chris? To _anyone_?

“Jill?”

Jill jumped and looked to Parker, the man who had stood by her faithfully this entire shit show and not once attempted to usurp her control. Jill was used to commanding, strong men and women taking charge, and she was happy to allow it. She was a quieter person, preferring to keep her head down and use stealth. She had her skills that made her better as a sleuth operative and combat wasn’t her forte, though she was a formidable opponent regardless. 

For a long time, she’d compared herself to Leon Kennedy and told herself that she could be what Chris wanted if she just became more like the other man. It had never worked, of course. Chris had been blind to anyone making an advance on him, including his current partner Jessica. It had taken Jill years to accept that his blindness was because he always had another person occupying his thoughts.

“Are you okay?”

Jill nodded, smiling tiredly at Parker. “I’ve been better,” she admitted. “Drowning seems like the worst way to go, if you ask me.”

“We made it,” Parker assured her as they both started forward, near enough to the main hall of the ship to let their guard down, if only for a second. “And no thanks to our dashing heroes.” He winked and she smiled wider. They’d saved themselves. It was something to be proud of. “Let’s go save their butts, yeah?”  
“Sounds good to me,” Jill said, pushing open a golden door with ornate decoration on the sides of it, bringing them both back into the casino. The golden light washed over them, neon glistening off slot machines and roulette tables and card bars. A “score,” as her father would have called it. Break into the machines and get a small amount of coins to exchange, never get greedy, never get impossible, just enough to slip by unnoticed. And with the neon and cold metal—

“Hear that?” Jill asked, taking the stairs two at a time in her descent, her Samurai Edge up and at the ready. Her eyes scanned the casino lounge and she saw him, up high on a balcony, dressed in layers with a gas mask concealing his face. “There.”

“Veltro!” Parker declared, bringing up his Colt Government Model M1911A1 and aiming his sights on the man they’d both been pursuing on this damned ship. “You almost missed the party.”

“Friendly BSAA patrons,” that cool, unemotional voice said to them, filtered by the mask. “You stopped the Regia Solis.” The giant laser from the satellite in the sky— it would have been the death of her and Parker if they hadn’t confused it with one of Veltro’s UAVs. Stopping the Regia Solis had been more for her and Parker than this shit head. “Now I will reveal what I know.” He held his hands in the air, clenching them into fists. “Everything about the Queen Zenobia and the secrets she keeps!”

Parker jerked his chin up. “What secrets?”

“Consider this,” the Veltro scumbag began. “First, why did it take till now to find the Queen Zenobia? How was it able to float around the Mediterranean undetected? It wasn’t magic. Second, why did all traces of Veltro vanish after the Terragrigia panic?”

Jill’s brow furrowed as dots began to connect into a shape she didn’t like, Parker gritting his teeth and demanding, “Why don’t you tell us, huh?”

The man chuckled. “And third… Why is someone trying to use the Regia Solis to destroy the Zenobia? The answers to those questions will lead you to an inconvenient truth. You were to have found it, and that—”

A shot rang out, sudden and deafening, and the man buckled forward, pitching over the edge of the balcony with a yelp of pain. He hit the ground hard, the mask clattering away, a balaclava covering all defining features for the moment. Jill whirled around and saw BSAA Operative Jessica Sherawat, dressed like she was hitting the strip club, with her Beretta 92FS in the air, the smoking gun. 

Jill and Parker ran to the fallen Veltro terrorist, but she had her back to the man to cover Parker just in time to see Chris run up behind Jessica. Chris grabbed the muzzle of Jessica’s weapon and yanked it down. “Jessica!” he shouted, voice echoing harshly in Jill’s ears. “Why did you fire?!”

“To protect our people!” Jessica shot back. “Isn’t that our job?”

Jill tore her attention from Chris in time to look back and watch Parker de-mask the terrorist. As the balaclava was pulled away, cherry-red hair fell about a sharp, pale face, a man with thin lips and a contorted expression of pain. “Raymond?” A man that Parker, apparently, recognized. As this Raymond choked on his agony, Parker reared back like he’d been slapped. “What— why?” Parker bent forward, getting closer to Raymond than Jill was comfortable with. They had been close, once upon a time. That much was obvious. “Why play the part of Veltro?”

There were whispered words, and Parker was bending over, his ear to that mouth, listening intently. Jill couldn’t make out what was being said. Raymond’s head fell back and Parker looked dumbfounded. “What do you mean?”

“Find the truth,” Raymond rasped. “About Terragrigia…” His eyes rolled back and his body went limp. Jill stared for a moment before realizing the man was dead. She stared another second longer and wondered why she didn’t feel some sort of triumph or success. The man had been their enemy, hadn’t he? So why was Parker acting like he’d lost someone important in his life? And why did that make Jill so ready to mourn a person who’d been willing to kill her? Unless— had he even meant to hurt them at all?

Footsteps approached behind her, Chris and Jessica coming to stand around Parker and the body as well, Chris as far from Jill as he could be. Parker stood, his head bowed. “What a terrible loss…” They all stood together, staring down at Raymond’s body, sharing a moment of silence that Jill couldn’t figure out. What they were showing their respect for, Jill hoped it brought Parker some sort of comfort.

There was a sudden clamor behind them, above, below, and then the ship was shaking and swaying with what had to have been an explosion, or something colossal colliding with the ship itself. Jessica was thrown into Chris, the woman crying out as she clung to the larger man for balance. “This ship doesn’t have much longer,” Jill told Parker, trying to relay how sorry she was to move him away from his dead friend so quickly. “We can’t let this virus contaminate the sea.”

Chris nodded, maneuvering Jessica off and away from him when she failed to try and stand on her own again once the ground still. “We’ve already searched the Queen Semiramis,” he told Jill. “So I think I know where this ship’s lab is. We’re headed there now.”

“Alright,” Parker said, visibly bringing himself back into the game. “I’ll find a way to delay the sinking.” He stepped forward, looking down at the scantily clad brunette that was still making moon-eyes at Chris. Poor girl. She was catching on even slower than Jill had. “You with me?”

Jill paused. “Yeah.”

“Well,” Parker said enigmatically. “A little friendly partner swapping should keep us on our toes.”

“Roger that,” Chris said with his usual robotic professionalism. “We’ll take care of the virus. You two buy us some time.”

Parker nodded. “Got it.”

Chris broke away, heading for the door that would take them deeper into the ship. Jill jogged forward, catching up with him easily, looking up when she saw he was handing her some kind of device. “Jill, this works anywhere, even underwater. It should slow those things down.” 

It looked like some sort of miniature Naval mine with menacing spikes along the spherical surface that was attached to a grip the length of her palm. It was deadly, she could tell that much, and she felt better to know she’d have some way to fight back, even when beneath the waves. She looked up at the other man. “Thanks, Chris.”

Chris didn’t acknowledge her thanks. “Also, I’ve marked off all the possible locations for the lab.” He wasn’t looking at her, but at the weapon in her hand. The ship was sinking, and so was Jill’s chest. Chris had come to save her and Parker, but he wasn’t here for _her._ Of course he wasn’t, he didn’t love her. But Jill had hoped that maybe he’d have come not to save a romantic interest, but a friend. 

They climbed the stairs, heading back into the ship, leaving the other two behind but not getting far enough out of earshot to miss a key point in their conversation.

“He never got the hint,” Jessica complained. “What a drag.”

Parker let out a noise of flippancy. “Maybe he’s already taken, Jessica.”

The door fell shut behind them both, leaving them the sole occupants of a private billiards room, and Jill suddenly realized how awful it was to be alone with someone who couldn’t look her in the eye. And after what they’d heard… Is that what Jessica and Parker thought? That Chris and Jill were a thing? God, she’d give anything for that to be the reality, and she already had in the worst kind of way. Leon Kennedy, the rookie cop who had stood his ground and smiled at her so warmly even in the face of her cold gaze. He’d been so smart, figuring out the puzzle of the Rockfort Island from just the simple piece of paper, and he’d faced their accusations with his head held high and blue eyes weighed with something far too heavy for his age.

_“I know what I do because I was afraid, not because I’m special and not because I’m a spy… I want to make sure what happened in Raccoon City never happens to anyone ever again.”_

Chris wouldn’t look at her.

“How is Leon?”

The name was somehow louder than the gunshot that had killed Raymond. Chris froze in his tracks, going completely still, barely even breathing from what she could tell. They had to keep moving, they had to get off this ship with the virus destroyed, but couldn’t she take this time to talk to her friend? Chris wouldn’t allow it anywhere else. Nothing more receptive than a captive audience. 

“I feel awful for what we did,” she said softly, looking at the plush carpet that was damp with the conditions of the ship. “He was a good kid.” She swallowed hard. “How is he?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Shouldn’t he? Unless— “Are you not seeing him?”

Chris whirled around in a flurry of anger and heartache, his brown eyes flashing and telling Jill everything she needed to know, Jill unafraid as he stalked towards her. “Look around you,” he growled, low and dangerous and yet still Chris, always Chris, only ever Chris. “Does this look like the kind of environment that allows me to see someone? Anyone? Do you think this would be safe to bring him into?”

“I just thought that you’d both be eager to try some anything—“

_”My own family condemned him to die and then let him be blackmailed for years into hell.”_

It didn’t make sense until it did. Chris wasn’t seeing Leon because the BSAA wasn’t safe for the younger man that Chris cherished so deeply. It was almost sweet in a way that made Jill wish she was outside in the rain so no one would notice she was about to cry. Why couldn’t he care about her like that? “I’m sorry,” she whispered, unable to get anything else out. Chris turned away on his heel, broad shoulders stiff. “I’m sorry,” she helplessly said again. 

“I don’t care if you’re sorry,” Chris snapped. “All of you are nothing but sorry. I’ve told you over and over what I want from you assholes, and yet you still keep beating the same dead horse like it’ll tell you something new. I don’t care if you’re sorry for what you did to me. I care if you’re sorry for what you did to Leon.”

He took a step back, expression tortured. “You didn’t see him,” he told Jill, not meeting her eyes again all of a sudden. She didn’t know if she’d rather face the anger or have this nothing again. “How being alone has messed him up. The things it drove him to do, the people who’ve hurt him, what he’s let them do to him. Leon was barely the same person when I first saw him. But then as the night went on and he showed he was still the same man I’m in love with…” 

Jill watched Chris swallow hard and told herself, for the millionth time, that she would never be enough. 

“He’s still there,” Chris got out. “He’s still Leon. He’s still that same man that made awful puns and stared monsters down without a sound and made me face what was the right thing to do. He didn’t make me better, but he made me want to be someone worthy of him. And he’s so _good_ , Jill, and you people just…” He threw his hands in the air, visibly frustrated. “I don’t understand how you could do that to him. Not to Leon. Maybe someone else, maybe someone we don’t know or who proved to be a fucking coward, but not Leon. Anyone but him.” 

Chris was blinking rapidly— was he crying too? “He suffered so much, and you people just made him suffer more. How— how could you do that to him? How can you belittle what we had and say you were protecting me? Do you honestly think I’d just get over him? That I’d move on?”

Jill bit her tongue. “It was six years of separation, Chris. No one loves a stranger that long.”

Chris’s grip on his gun tightened— an H&K he’d been carrying since Raccoon City, a gun that Jill knew wasn’t his, not really— and he started to speak again. “It’s been more than six years. And to this day, I want to scream I love him from the top of my fucking lungs, but I can’t because I’m terrified someone will hear me. That _you’ll_ hear me. Do you understand that, Jill? A villain a a friend, even family, I am terrified someone will hear me say I love him and hurt him again for it. Do you even understand how fucking sick that makes you people? I’m scared of my own closest friends knowing I’m in love with this man because I’m scared he’ll be destroyed by all of you all over again and none of you will even be sorry for it.”

“He makes you change, Chris.”

“Yes, he does.” Chris stood tall, jaw set, still not looking at her, but somehow filled with a strange kind of pride. “He makes me selfish. Makes me crueler. Makes me violent. And he makes me happy. Makes me feel special. Important. Wanted. Needed. He makes me a better person and he makes me into what I need to be to save the world and everyone in it, because the person I need to save above all others is him. So yes, he makes me change. He makes me a completely different person. And honestly? He loves who I become and I love myself for it too. The person I don’t love is the person who shoots himself with adrenaline and morphine and coexists with people who hurt the man I love more than anything else. The me I don’t love is the me that can be in your presence without spitting hatred because you don’t even care that you did this to him. The me that I _hate_ is the me that I am now.”

“He joined this fight—”

“He didn’t join, he was blackmailed,” Chris spat. “Let a girl be thrown into the wild by herself or become an agent. And he’s such a good person that he gave up everything for a girl he can never see again. That’s what kind of person Leon is. And you? You and the others lied and let him be trapped in that hell. I could have helped him. I was _supposed_ to help him. I made promises to always keep him safe and that’s all I want to do. You made me break that promise. You ruined his chance at a normal, happy life. And you aren’t even sorry for it. That’s the kind of person you are, Jill Valentine. And it doesn’t matter who I am, whether I love myself or not, I’ll never love a person like you.”

Chris’s words felt a little like a knife in her lungs.

The boat shook beneath them, swaying dangerously, and Chris suddenly stumbled back even further, something like a mask sliding down and covering his face, his emotions. Jill had been given a glimpse into what they’d done to him. Chris could repeat that he was fine over and over, that Leon was the one affected, but it would always be a lie. Chris was _destroyed_ after seeing what Leon Kennedy had gone through and the blame laid with Jill and the others. They might as well have shot Leon Kennedy point blank for Chris to see. Hurting Leon hurt Chris.

“I’m sorry,” Jill said again, useless, wasted breath. “I don’t— I don’t know how to fix it.”

“I don’t think this was all Raymond’s doing,” Chris said, slamming back into the present situation so suddenly that Jill felt like she had whiplash. “I think we’ve only heard half the story. There’s a lot about this mission that doesn’t make sense yet.” _He still wouldn’t look at her._ “We need to get to the lab.”

Jill set her jaw and told herself she had no right to be hurt by Chris’s blatant return to professionalism. If anything, she should be concerned for him and how he refused to let himself _feel,_ refused to let himself talk about his aches, his pain. Then again, who could he talk to? Jill? Barry? Rebecca was away in Chicago, John was in Africa, Claire was in India. There was no one for Chris to talk to— no one he trusted, that is.

And a lot of the blame for that laid with Jill.

She found a shaft that led below the billiard room and leaped down, knowing Chris would follow her because that was the mission and not because he was loyal to her in any capacity beyond a fellow soldier.

. . .

The T-Abyss.

What an ugly name for a ugly thing. RE-engineering the T-Virus to something so violently destructive that it could make genuine towering monsters from the peaceful creatures of the seas. Horrific monstrosities that had once been human, pale and wet and cold and more unrecognizable than an honest zombie. Chris would have nightmares about what he saw here for years and—

Clive fucking O’Brian. Using them, throwing them into harm’s way, creating a scenario where even the most skilled BSAA operative would be lucky to survive. All for what? To force FBC Commissioner Morgan Lansdale out of hiding? Chris understood being at the end of a rope, he understood needing to do anything it took to catch the villain, but O’Brian could have told them of his plan. If he’d brought them in, nothing would have changed and they would have been more prepared for the things they faced and discovered. There had been no reason to keep the fucking secret. Were Quint and Keith dead along with Parker? And had Jessica made it out? That fucking—

Chris squeezed his hands into fists as the sun rose over the ocean in front outside of the helicopter cargo hold, the water as blue as a priceless gem beneath their feet, stretching on and on forever. It was beautiful, sure, but it was the wrong shade of blue for him.

Beside him, Jill went down on her knees, her expression tempestuous like the sea had been last night. Something was bothering her. Of course something was bothering her. Parker Luciani was dead and Clive O’Brian had betrayed the entirety of the BSAA. Good intentions didn’t erase sins and the devil never asked for the reason why a terrible thing had been done. 

Even though Chris was pissed, he honestly wasn’t surprised. O’Brian had been part of the people lying to Chris and keeping him in the dark about Leon’s whereabouts and wellbeing. He’d been the one fabricating the reports and falsifying claims that Leon was with Sherry and acting like an average civilian. He’d been the one insisting and encouraging his friends to lie to him. As far as Chris was concerned, Clive O’Brian could rot.

But Jill— had trusted the man. As far as leadership went, O’Brian had been cool and competent. Maybe not trustworthy, especially not now, but Jill had never been on the receiving end of such betrayal. This wasn’t like Wesker. Albert Wesker had been Captain of S.T.A.R.S. for barely a year before he’d turned out to be the worst of all humanity. O’Brian had been leading the BSAA for nearly three years at this point and, unlike Wesker, he was an objectively friendly party. Attending barbecues, setting up potlucks, helping with office birthday celebrations. Chris was just this side of too close to hating the man, but he knew he was the only one. O’Brian had garnered everyone’s trust and reliance completely and holistically and Jill was now on her knees beside Chris in the helicopter, trying to cope with her leader betraying her so suddenly and carelessly. 

They could have died.

Chris— wasn’t okay with Jill. He wasn’t even close to being okay with her or Barry after everything. He wasn’t okay with O’Brian, of course, but there was no attempt to even reconcile that wound on either of their parts, so O’Brian was as lost of a cause as it got. David had apologized profusely and was actually the person sending Chris very quiet, very discreet mission reports from USSTRATCOM that he legally shouldn’t have his hands on just so Chris could know Leon was, at least, alive. David had made his amends. Jill and Barry, though. They were family but Chris had such a difficult time forgiving. And yet— 

He hated seeing Jill look so lost. So he went down on his knees beside her on the helicopter floor and looked her in the eye. “We can finally reveal what happened at Terragrigia.

Jill blinked, startled that Chris was talking to her now that the mission was done. Then she swallowed and turned away. “Yeah, but the cost was high.”

“The BSAA will have to be overhauled,” Chris replied, keeping the optimism from his voice. It was a sick kind of reassuring to know O’Brain wasn’t a terrible person to _only_ Chris and Leon. O’Brian was just a shit head to everyone and that was terrible and comforting.

“The storm is gone now,” Jill said softly, almost like she was in a daze. Definitely lost in her thoughts. Maybe she was thinking of Parker. “But how long will it last?”

Chris knew it wouldn’t last long. He just knew that year before had been the longest of his life. Finding Leon in such a way, uncovering what his family had done to him, hearing about Harvardville and his sister being caught in this hell again. It had been too much and he'd known then that it would never stop. “We’ll be ready,” Chris told her, tentatively stepping back into the role of a friend with Jill. She was— she was in a bad place. Losing her partner, losing her leader, losing her stability in life. Chris was still angry. He was so fucking angry. But Jill had this look in her eyes that reminded him so much of Leon that he couldn’t just ignore it. He shoved down that anger and looked to Jill and tried to remind himself of all the reasons she’d been one of his closest friends for six years. “We can fight this, Jill. Together.”

She stared at him owlishly, clearly stunned. Then, “Are you really not in contact with Leon?”

Chris’s capacity to forgive was squashed. He looked away from her and back to the sea that was the wrong shade of blue. “It’s not safe.” He’d already told her that. He couldn’t trust the BSAA with Leon. Leon was too important and the BSAA had already proven to be unworthy.

“How do I get a message to him?”

Chris’s gaze snapped back to Jill, his brow furrowed. “What are you going to say?”

Jill grimaced. “If I tell you, you’ll think I’m trying to manipulate you.”

“… You’re going to apologize.”

“I’m just so sorry,” Jill said, her voice strained, an edge of hysteria creeping in. “He was a good kid, and he was just _a kid._ He wasn’t a threat to me, he wasn’t a threat to any of us, and yet I was so blinded by my fear that I would lose you that I let myself to something ugly and awful.” She shook her head and blinked rapidly. Was she crying? Chris didn’t know if she was genuinely sorry but Jill had never been a good actress. “I want— I _need_ to tell him I’m sorry, Chris. Even if you never forgive me, I need to tell him.”

She looked him in the eye and Chris saw the tears, but he also saw bone deep resolve and a familiar echo of the Jill Valentine he had known and admired. She saw something wrong, something that spat in the face of justice, and was ready to fight it. Even if it was herself and her actions.

“I’m not sorry to you,” Jill said. “Not anymore. You’ve said you don’t want it and you’re right. We didn’t do much to you aside from lie and you don’t seem to care. I hate that I lied to you at all because you mean so much to me, Chris, you really really do, but I know that what we did— what I did to Leon. Forcing him to be alone like this. It’s unforgivable. I don’t even want you to love me back. I know I wouldn’t be able to love me after what I’ve done either.”

Chris suddenly didn’t know how to react now that Jill was finally owning up in the way he’d always wanted her to. David had done this, back when Chris had first found out, David had done this. He’d gone into Chris’s office and very quietly and carefully apologized for himself and to Leon and had sat there and listened to Chris ramble on and on about how much Leon had changed and how much it hurt Chris to see it but how much he admired the Leon that was in the world now. And David had been nothing but genuine and sincere and Chris had seen the ache in the man’s eyes. And it had taken just one small speech for Chris to be convinced. 

_“Officer Kennedy was a brave young man. I… He shouldn’t have been alone. Not after what he went through. And yet that’s what we did. And you? You shouldn’t have been without him. I know that now. The way you looked at him— what you felt for him was so all-encompassing couldn’t have been anything less than good.”_

“I knew you were in love even though you barely knew each other and it scared me,” Jill continued, drawing Chris from his memories. “I just didn’t understand it. How you could love someone so much after only knowing them for so long. But my disbelief didn’t make it any less true and I’m so sorry for helping take that impossibly good thing from you both.” Chris was almost too stunned to respond to any of this. “I know you won’t forgive me so I just—”

“I could,” Chris interrupted. Jill stopped and looked to him with wide eyes again. Chris steeled himself to continue. “I could,” he repeated. “Maybe not now, but soon.” He had gotten what he wanted, right? He wanted Jill to be sorry for what had been done to Leon. “If you’re serious about apologizing to him, and I know you would never try something like this again… I could forgive you.” 

It felt— it was strange to consider when looking at how long he’d been angry with her, but beneath the anger, Chris was _tired._ And Leon was on an operation somewhere David hadn’t been able to tell him of. Chris’s injuries were starting to ache, the adrenaline and morphine shots and natural adrenaline wearing off, leaving him sore and agonized and without any way to prolong the inevitable fall out. He was surviving on pain suppressants and spite and hatred for the viruses and he just— he couldn’t even have Leon. He wanted his friends back. He wanted his family back. He just couldn’t let them in without betraying Leon, but if Jill was apologizing to Leon, then maybe Chris could forgive her. After all, Leon— 

Leon would forgive Jill. And Leon would want Chris to forgive Jill too.

“After this,” Chris said, trying to think this through clearly and failing as the Chris he’d been a year ago reared its ugly head, excited to be friends with Jill again. “After this, let’s get something to eat. Talk things through.” He stared into the sea that was the wrong shade of blue and heard Jill’s throat catch with what had to be optimistic disbelief. He hoped those tears that had been in her eyes before had become less from pain and more from a tentative happiness. “Like I said— the storm is gone, though it won’t last long, but we’ll be ready for whatever comes, Jill.”

He looked to her and saw the alleviation in her eyes and felt some sort of satisfaction in being the one to put that look there. He couldn’t smile at her, didn’t know if he’d be able to for a long time, but at least he could look her in the eye again.

. . .

**A Few Months Later.**

_“The BSAA received intel as to the whereabouts of Umbrella’s founder, Ozwell E. Spencer. Jill and I were ordered by the BSAA’s European Headquarters to apprehend him. We accepted that mission in the hopes of uncovering some info that would lead us to Wesker.”_

To say Chris was tired of decrepit mansions and demonized wealth didn’t even begin to cover it. 

Jill’s footsteps were light and reassuring behind him, an echo Chris was slowly growing used to. This was their first assignment as partners again, their relationship steadily growing back into what it had used to be. Trust and loyalty and camaraderie, something Chris had sorely missed feeling within the BSAA, with Jill in particular. He had it again and he felt something shakily like optimism. They were in the mansion, they’d fought the ugly ass monsters, they were going to find Spencer and information on Wesker, and they were going to take down that asshole once and for all— together.

Together.

That was a scary thing for Chris to imagine. “Kinda wish you were here,” he told Leon under his breath as he and Jill went through the winding hallway after breaking out from the dungeons below with only one clip to each of their names. Corpses were strewn across the floor like twisted centerpieces of art. 

He wished Leon were here so he could feel something more than the anxious dread knotted in his stomach. Jill was reliable and strong, but Leon made Chris feel like he could smile in the darkest moments. It was unfair to Jill to wish for Leon, but Chris couldn’t change who he was. Instead, he turned his thoughts of Leon to thoughts of a possible set of test relay runs for the BSAA operatives that featured the dropped-spike trap he and Jill had just used. Could be useful to practice team coordination efforts. David was the new head of the BSAA. David would love the idea.

They reached a set of towering, ornate doors together as thunder clapped outside. Their shoulders brushed the old wood and Chris and Jill trained their ears to listen for anyone or anything inside. Chris couldn’t hear a sound, so he gave Jill a sharp nod. They slammed into the door in unison with twin grunts and burst into the room that was lined with bookshelves, huge glass windows looking out over a cliff beyond, a dead body next to a wheelchair. They had guns up, Matilda a comforting weight in Chris’s hand as his sights landed on—

_Wesker._

Chris didn’t hesitate, didn’t even bother trading words. He opened fire, fury coursing through his veins and into the weapon in his hands, bullets becoming revenge for years and years of death and pain forced upon the world at large by this monster of a man. The man wasn’t human, though, so Chris could barely call Wesker a man. Wesker dodged the bullets with blurs of unnatural speed, sharp, quick dodges from side to side, advancing quickly and driving his knee into Jill’s chest. She went down with a cry and Chris fired over and over, yet not a single bullet was landing. Wesker looked up at Chris, sunglasses reflecting the lightning from the window behind him. 

Then Wesker lunged forward, grabbing Chris by his skull, his huge hand enveloping everything, and he slammed Chris back into the floor. Chris’s skull knocked hard with the marble beneath and he tasted blood as his teeth nearly bit through his tongue. Wesker’s hand _squeezed_ with impossible strength and Chris saw stars as his bones felt like they were creaking together.

“Wesker!”

Jill’s shout had Wesker faltering in his quest to _crush Chris’s skull with his hand,_ and Chris took the opportunity to lash out, his fist driving into Wesker’s jaw, a mean right hook. Satisfaction burst through Chris as Wesker let out a sound of pain and frustration. The monster blinked out of existence and came back out of reach. Jill’s Samurai Edge laid shots into where Wesker should have been, but he was gone again, nothing more than a smudge of black and blond in the dark room. Chris brought himself back onto his feet, tried to think of what Leon would do when faced with such a harrowing fight. 

Leon would get closer quarters. Wesker could move like a ghost, but he needed room to maneuver. Tight turns and small areas would trap the man, he wouldn’t be able to dodge unless he wanted to run into a wall. Leon would find somewhere smaller and get Wesker caged in.

“Jill, we need to—”

Chris was cut off by a leather-clad fist driving into his face, sending him to the floor again. Wesker was fast and _strong_ and Chris couldn’t breathe for a moment past the blood in his nose and mouth. Wesker laughed cruelly outside of Chris’s consciousness. Jill shouted again, far away and panicked. Chris brought up Matilda and fired wildly at where he knew Wesker was judging by his voice. As he started to feel dizzy, he thought of the morphine shot in his pouch on his back. 

Wesker was suddenly in front of him right at the moment Matilda clicked empty. “Out of luck, Chris,” Wesker said, his drawl low and almost X-rated. “When will you stop trying to fight the inevitable?”

A palm slammed into Chris’s chest and he was thrown across the room, hitting a bookcase hard, Matilda knocked from his grip and skittering away. He choked on the blood and slumped to the ground, then immediately began dragging himself to his feet. Jill cried out as she was thrown across the room like Chris had been, but by her neck instead. She skidded across the floor and her side slammed into a pillar. She shook visibly and Chris clambered back up, trying to remain steady, drawing out his knife. Wesker stood in front of the towering windows, lightning flashing, and laughed at them. “Simpletons,” Wesker growled. “You keep standing like you think you can win this fight! Are you trying to make me angry?”

Jill fired the last of her bullets as she struggled to her feet, Wesker dodging them fluidly like water no matter how true Jill’s aim was. Wesker slammed into Chris, a punch to the gut, to the chest, elbow to the face that was already bloody and broken, and once Chris was on the floor again, Wesker shot into Jill, grabbing her by the fragile neck once more and lifting her from her feet, pinning her to a column. Jill thrashed about, fighting his grip with her hands on his wrist. Wesker smiled like the devil as she choked, all teeth and all evil. Lightning flashed and Chris saw his opening. 

He charged forward, throwing his fist without planning, just knowing Wesker’s pride would rather he not take a hit than finish the job. The monster flashed out of existence again, retreating step by step, and Chris kept up with him, kept swinging, missing over and over but not giving in. Then Wesker caught a punch and twisted Chris’s arms around, spinning him and nearly dislocating his shoulder. Chris sneered and broke from the grip only to be hit hard in the chest again. Being flung back had Chris arching his leg up in the air in the kick he’d seen Leon do with graceful ease back in Spain. Wesker bent backwards, dodged the kick, and Jill began firing again, only two shots ringing out that Wesker dodged as easy as breathing, spinning sideways in the air like gravity had no hold on him.

He landed smoothly, angular lips twisted with a smirk. Chris and Jill sprang forward as one, Chris throwing his fists again and Jill swiping with her knife, but they were both easily thrown back by Wesker’s strength. Something cracked in Chris’s side and Jill hit glass, the glass itself shattering and Jill letting out a ragged noise of pain as she dropped. Chris came back up, had no other choice but to come back up, and Wesker snatched him by the shoulder to throw his elbow into Chris’s stomach. Then the monster took Chris by the throat and lifted him high in the air, slamming him down and dragging him across the length of a long table, flinging him hard across the floor. 

Chris landed badly on his broken side and found he couldn’t get back up. “Leon,” he breathed, thinking of Matilda that was somewhere across the room. He rolled onto his back and tried to breathe past the pain, knowing Leon took worse and kept going, so so could Chris. But his body was weak and he couldn’t breathe past the blood that was dripping down the back of his throat. Wesker stalked forward like a predator approaching wounded prey and scooped Chris by the neck, hoisting him into the air and holding him, constricting Chris’s already ruined breathing. His eyes rolled into the back of his head as darkness encroached. He thought of the photo of him and Leon in his back pocket and prayed Jill wouldn’t find it on his body. He didn’t want her to hurt like that.

“Let’s finish this.”

Wesker twisted his hand into a fist, ready to drive his hand through Chris’s chest, and that would be it, Chris would be gone, Jill would see him die, Leon would—

Chris was suddenly dropped and landing on his knees as—

Jill went through the window and plummeted down the cliffs below, holding Wesker to her chest, accepting death in Chris’s stead, saving his life, trading her life, Jill was falling—

_”Jill!”_

Chris’s outstretched hand into the nothing didn’t save anyone.

The storm raged carelessly around him as he stared down that endless chasm beneath, Jill and Wesker both disappearing from sight. He felt nothing but—

He felt nothing.

Chris stared and stared like that would change the reality of what he’d seen, but it was useless. Just as he was beginning to have her in his life again, Jill Valentine was gone, choosing to give her life for his own. They’d always privately agreed that taking down Wesker was their ultimate goal, but this wasn’t what Chris had wanted, this price wasn’t something he was willing to pay. He’d give his life, but only ever his own, not anyone else’s, not Jill’s. But she was gone regardless of what he wanted and what he’d been willing to give and Chris— Chris—

She’d been in love with him. To the very end, Jill had loved Chris and yet she’d never been given a taste of the happiness she’d yearned for and thought she could find in him. Ages ago, Chris would have been happy to keep it from her out of spite and anger, he would have said he wasn’t capable of hurting them both in faking a connection he didn’t truly feel for the sake of her falsified satisfaction. But now he just wished he’d been cruel enough to them both to lie and give her what she’d wanted. Hindsight was twenty-twenty. Lying wouldn’t have saved either of them. But if Chris had known she was going to die here, for him, an awful part of himself knew he would have kissed her only once just so she could die knowing what it was like. 

He sat back on the marble floor in that empty, huge room, lightning flashing, blood on his face and clothes and Matilda empty and out of reach. Chris turned his stare from the chasm into the empty sky and there was—

Nothing.


End file.
